What is the Covenant? Did you know that it is tied to relationship? The word points to the way that God relates to us in Jesus Christ. God has set things up such that there is a structure or nature of the relationship, setting out the terms or grounds of the relationship. The gospel story unfolds in a very organic sort of way. We look at the overall unfolding of God's covenantal workings, in particular the covenants with Noah, Abraham, Moses, and David - all of them pointing forward to the New Covenant in Jesus Christ. We learn that in terms of the substance of the Abrahamic Covenant and the New Covenant, that they are essentially one, and yet they are administered differently. We talk about how to read the Bible. The concept of the Covenant is a uniquely helpful paradigm or prism by which to see the Scriptures as one book. We see that God made a covenant with Adam but then Adam breaks that covenant. Then God establishes a promise in the garden - of a Redeemer, and thus graciously establishes a covenant. God then preserves the created order with Noah so that His covenant purposes can go forward, and then He calls Abraham. There for the first time He makes what we might call a redemptive covenant. The characteristics of these covenants are that they are a bond in blood, sovereignly administered by the God of Israel, with His people. When God makes these various covenants, we realize that they are not a different covenant, but they are all related to the others - in other words, they grow organically and all move towards the New Covenant which God makes with Christ, the Second Adam. At the very end of His life, on the night in which He was betrayed, or Lord Jesus institutes and establishes the New Covenant. "This is the New Covenant in my blood," said Jesus - and he thereby was gathering up the Passover meal and the Exodus tradition. The New Covenant is a re-establishment and is in the blood of Jesus. It is new in the sense that it is established in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and given a permanent form. Participants: Dr. Kevin Chiarot, Dan Elmendorf